Icehouse Musing

A couple of days ago, as I approached a cyclical reflection trigger (actually, two concurrent triggers, my 53rd birthday and my 1,000th uninterrupted Rosslyn daily update), I was moved to revisit some old photos from April 2020. I’m referring specifically to Susan and my icehouse musing that germinated during those early days of spring AND of the burgeoning COVID pandemic.

As we contemplate these last five years at Rosslyn, those quarantine-catalyzed days-turned-weeks-turned-months of slow, introspective soul searching take on especial significance. And our icehouse “What if?” brainstorming has proven central to what I now understand was a pivotal transition for us in many respects.

Susan’s coronavirus cabin fevering awakened her designer brain. She started replacing furniture, reupholstering existing furniture, and generally reevaluating design choices made thirteen or more years prior. I repeatedly became frustrated with her need for updates. It was a time to hunker, not a time to initiate changes based upon our quarantining reality.

But my imagination was also percolating. Not for furniture updates, but for revisiting long ago postponed project. I explained to Susan my icehouse re-interest. Although it made little practical sense to undertake such an ambitious project at a time when we’d already acknowledged that our timeline with Rosslyn was winding down, that we were approaching a time for downsizing and simplification, it was nevertheless exciting to contemplate the icehouse conversion we’d envisioned back in 2006-7.

I’ve written extensively about this, perhaps most succinctly in “Quarantining & Brainstorming”, so I’ll sidestep the temptation to longform it all over again. However the invigorating wellspring of energy and creativity that sprang from our collective decision to at least explore an adaptive reuse of Rosslyn’s historic icehouse is worth revisiting. It remains an important silverlining from the pandemic, so I’ll attempt a more lyric exploration to see if it turns up anything new and interesting.

But first a note on that hammocking photo above. My razzle-dazzle shirt suggests that a Zoom cocktail party (remember those?!) might well have been at least a partial explanation for my goofy grin mug. But swinging in a hammock with my bride while conjuring creative repurposing of an old building is at least partly to blame. It tends to bring out our quirky dreams again and again. Even when the tabula rasa looked like this five years ago.

Today the enduring legacy of the pandemic is enduringly positive for both of us. Rosslyn’s icehouse reimagined and rehabilitated may be the visible crown jewel, but the creative collaboration it signifies is as meaningful a souvenir. Perhaps this first swipe at a poem will capture some of that. If not, the photos at the end certainly should!

Icehouse Reverie Unrhymed

From Antigua to
the Adirondacks
as worlds contract and
contagion blooms,
then slow-motion days
worry-wondering
about the unknowns
and unknowables
until, exhausted,
we unplug, reboot.

Decamped, we head out
doors for hammocking,
for forgetting and
worry-free wonder,
for mind wandering.
Hanging sunset-side,
adjacent to barns —
nineteenth century
carriage house-barn and
neglected icehouse —
we warm mud season 
with sundowners and
crackling bonfire.

Once upon a time
this handsome icehouse
preserved provisions,
extending winter
into summer,
a vault for lake ice
refrigeration.
We once imagined
a transformation
from obsolete barn
to gym or “club house”,
but daydreams fade and
become abandoned. 

Instead the icehouse
served as storage for
lumber and lawn chairs,
deck furniture and
green garden hoses. 

But now, daydreaming
beside a bonfire,
hammock swaying and
sunset guilding the 
historic icehouse,
curiosity’s
closest of cousins,
creativity,
whispers “What if this?”,
whispers “What if that?”
Our minds are racing,
possibilities,
possibilities,…

Soon scribbled sketches
become CAD drawings
which become blueprints,
revisions revised,
re-envisioned and
revised again and
again and again,
reviving nearly
two decades’ dormant
hopes, dreams, and visions.  

This quarantine gift
glows from the icehouse 
window panes tonight,
remembered dreaming,
reimagining
at the sunsetting 
of uncertainty.